Not all Water is Created Equal, Find Out What You Should Drink

The municipal tap water in Encinitas, California, where I live, has 15 pollutants, including two unregulated contaminants. What's in your home town's tap water? Check out EWG.org to find out.

Now that I have found out officially that my tap water might have some impurities, to say the least, should I rush out and purchase some bottled water? Or maybe I should get a home water delivery service? Or perhaps a Brita filter?

None of these choices represents the healthiest drinking water as you'll learn reading on.

If I buy bottled water, I will contribute to a mutli-100-billion-dollar-a-year industry that is wreaking havoc on our environment.

I visited the bottled water association's website and while they do an admirable job promoting recycling, plastic bottled water is terrible for the environment.

According to LighterFootStep.com, bottled water produces up to 1.5 million tons of plastic waste per year. And FoodAndWaterWatch.com states that plastic requires up to 47 million gallons of oil per year to produce. While the plastic used to bottle beverages is of high quality and in demand by recyclers, over 80 percent of plastic bottles are simply thrown away.

That assumes empty bottles actually make it to a garbage can. Plastic waste is now at such a volume that massive, Texas-size islands of trash now spin endlessly in the world's major oceans. These micro plastic particles never completely break down. This represents a great risk to marine life, killing birds and fish which mistake our garbage for food.

So next time you reach for that bottled water, remind yourself of something: All the plastic that has been produced on earth, ever since plastics were invented, every single piece of it, is still here. True, some of it has been recycled, which is good, but it's still here in one form or another and will be for centuries to come. Our landfills can only hold so much.

Ask yourself if you really want to contribute to the world's growing environmental crisis? Or are you going to do your part for the environment by not drinking bottled water?

Even home water delivery, although better for the environment, still takes a toll on the environment. Fossil-fuel burning trucks deliver the water, which often times are exposed to direct sunlight for hours. This may cause the bottle to leach cancer-causing petro chemicals into the water you're drinking (This is more so with small, single-use plastic drinking bottles than reusable polycarbonate containers).

Direct exposure to heat causes the water to reduce in ph value, which brings us to another health topic and to the million dollar health question: What is the healthiest water I should drink?

Most chronic illnesses and diseases are caused by too much acidity in the blood. What causes acidity? Stress, bad food, bad water, to name a few. All bottled water, even the ones that advertise themselves as the healthiest drinking water are all acidic. Perhaps when they are bottled at the source they are, at best, neutral ph (7.0). However, bottled water, and this is worth repeating, turns acidic because the bottles sit for hours, exposed to sunlight and leaching chemicals.

Even reverse osmosis or distilled water is at best neutral and purified water from a filter lacks bone-building minerals like calcium. Alkaline water is found naturally but only in a select few places around the world. In Japan and Korea, alkaline water is used as medicine to treat all kinds of illnesses.

Thanks to some high-tech companies, alkaline water is now available in the U.S. Some companies manufacture ionized water machines for home use. Although some consider the $2000 price tag expensive, considering that bottled water is more expensive per ounce than gasoline, paying $2000 for water that can balance your system, give you more mental clarity and even mitigate health problems is a small fee, especially if you have good credit. Some water companies will finance your alkaline water machine so you can pay a modest monthly fee for drinking healthy water.

Alkaline water has a higher concentration of oxygen meaning that you will rehydrate your system more efficiently. Alkaline water also has millions of antioxidant compounds to neutralize the effects of oxidation. Think of your cells like a bike that's left outdoors. Left exposed to the hostile elements, your cells, just like the bike, will rust and oxidize.

For those looking for mainstream medical analysis on alkaline water, you won't find much. But there is a lot of information on the Internet about alkaline water. It takes a while for the U.S. to accept Oriental Medicine theories. It's only been in the last five or ten years that acupuncture has been accepted in the mainstream medical community.

Expect alkaline water to become more popular exponentially every year. Environmental awareness is on the forefront of the mass consciousness. Alkaline water is not only healthy for the majority of people (in some rare cases, someone might have excess alkalinity) but also smart for the environment.

For more information or to purchase an alkaline water home machine, visit: IonWays.com/miracleh2o.